32 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN toriously gIfted Valerif' Hobson gives her best (maybe her only) performance as his mother (She is phenomenal in the pawne;;hop episode.) With John Mills and Ronald Squire. Directed b) Anthony Pelissier. (Regency, Oct 25-26.) SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER (1960)- This François Truffaut film is based on David Goodis's "Down There," a trim, well-written Amer- ican crime novel The movie busts out all over-and that' whdt's wonderful about it. Comedy, pathos, and tragedy are all scram- bled up. Charlie, the sad-faced little piano player (Charles Aznavour), is the thinnest- skinned of modern heroes: each time he has cared about someone he has suffered, and now he just wants to be "out of it." This is a comedy about melancholia-perhaps the only comedy about melancholIa Truffaut is freely inventive here-a young director willing to try almost anything-and Charlie's encoun- ters with the world are filled with good dnd bad jokes, bits from old Sacha Guitry films, clowns and thugs, tough kids, songs and fan- tasy and snow scenes, and homage to the American Grade-B gang"ter film" of the for- ties and fifties. The film is nihilistic in atti- tude yet by its wit and good spirits it's totally involved in life and fun. Nothing is clear-cut; the ironies crisscross and bounce. With Nicole Berger, Marie Dubois, Albert Rémy, Michèle Mercier, and Daniel Boulanger Written by Truffaut dnd Marcel Moussy; cinematography by Raoul Coutard In French. (Theatre 80 St. Marks; Oct. 24.) THE SHOUT (1979)-A poorly acted, incoherent, and unendurably loud film, entirely played at peak volume, in Dolby stereo. Directed by J erzy Skolimow ki, it stars Alan Bate d an occultist psychopath whose shout can kill. (Theatre 80 St. Marks; Oct. 27.) SISTERS (1973)-Brian De Palma's low-budget horror movie ahout a psychotic ex-Siamese twin has its share of flaked-out humor (as in the TV game-show parody at the beginning) and De Palma does some virtuoso stunts, though not in the dream-slapstick style of his later thrillers, "Carne" (1976) and "The Fury" (1978) This is a much more primitive scare picture He lurches hi way through, he can't seem to get two people talking to make a simple expository point without its sound- ing like the drabbest Republic picture of 1938 The facetious dialogue is a wet blanket, and De Palma isn't quite up to his apparent intention-to provide cheap thrills that are also a parody of old corn. He manages the thrills, though (there are some demented knife-slashings), and audiences seemed to be happily freaked by Bernard Hermann's score, with its old radio-play throb and zing. With Margot KIdder, who knows how to turn on sexiness with a wItch's precision, and Jennifer Salt, who gives a feeble performance as a nitwit girl reporter Also with Charles Durning, Lisle Wilson, Mary Davenport, Bill Finley and Barnard Hughes Shakily written by De Palma and Louisa Rose (Thalia; Oct 27 ) STAYING ALIVE Ludicrous As producer-writer- director, Sylvester Stallone turns everything into d fight, dnd this sequel to John Badham's "Saturday Night Fever," with John Travolta once again playing the dancer Tony Manero, seems designed to pound the audience into submission Stallone doesn't bother much with characters, scenes, or dialogue. He just puts the newly muscle-plated Travolta in front of the cameras, covers him with what looks like oil slick, and goes for the wham- barns. The film gives the audience such a pounding that if it weren't for the final two minutes of Travolta on the street, moving to the theme music from "Saturday Night Fever," people might not have the strength to crawl out of the theatre With Cynthia Rhode", Finola Hughes, and J uhe Bovasso, S-M.T-W.T-F-S 19 1 20 1 21 1 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 who has a couple of remarkable scenes as Tony's mother (8/22/83) (EmLa sy. .. (j] Olympia Quad; through Oct. 20.) TRADING PLACEs-Dan Aykroyd plays a snooty young blueblood and Eddie Murphy plays a con man-beggar. The two don't exactly trade place , they're trdded, by d IJdir of heartless, rich old brothers (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) who have made a heredity-versus- enVIronment bet-something we've been spared in movies of the past few decades John Landis has directed this comedy in a mock-thirties formal tyle, it's eerily arch and static. But the picture has its big, chug- ging structure working for it, the whole ap- paratus picks up speed toward the end and comes to a rousing, slapstick finish. With Denholm Elliott, Jamie Lee Curtis, Paul Gleason, and Kristin Holby From a script by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod. (7/11/83) (Olympia Quad, and Embassy 1. .. (j] Gramercy, and Embassy 72nd St; through Oct. 20.) TWILIGHT ZONE-THE MOVIE-Four young direc- tors- John Landis, Steven SpIelberg, Joe Dante, and the Australian George Miller- pay homage to the Rod Serling TV series "The Twilight Zone." It's disappointing that they didn't attempt to engineer more modern and artful macabre games than the ones on the old shows; what they've given us is an overproduced remake, but with some redeem- ing elements The prologue, written and di- rected by John Landis, and featuring Dan Aykroyd as a hitchhiker and Albert Brooks dS a driver, is a beauty, but the happy rush of fright we get from it has to sustain us for a long stretch, because the first two episodes are embarrassments The third, directed bv J 0 Dante, is a risky attempt at using a style derived from animated cartoons for an in- sidious, expressionist effect. The subJect- how horrible life might be if a ten-year-old boy (Jeremy Licht) could run everything just as he liked, on the basis of what he has learned from TV -Ioay be too fertile for the half-hour form The fourth episode, directed by Miller, from a scri pt by Richard Ma the- son, is the best reason to see the movie; it's a classic shocker of the short form Almost all the dction takes place in the confines of an airliner during a storm, where a passenger, played by John Lithgow, is seated squirming and thrashing about, sick with fear. Miller bUIlds the kind of immediacy and intensity that the high points of "Jaws" had. The image rush at you, they're fast and energÍ.l,- ing. And Lithgow does something that's tough for an actor to do: he shows fear wi th- out parodying it and yet makes it horrify- ingly funny. (7/25/83) (Olympia Quad.) WOMEN IN LOVE (1970)-Ken Russell's movie could perhaps be described as a gothic sex fantasy on themes from D H. Lawrence's novel. Visually and emotionally, it's ex- travagant and, trom tIme to time, impres- sive. Because Lawrence was one of the most purple of <1-11 great writer (perhaps the most, though rivalled by Conrad), Russell's style might deceive one Into imagining that he is providing an equivalent to Lawrence's prose. But though Lawrence's passionate impreci- sion is what's bad in his writing, we can pass right through it in his "Women in Love," because he was reaching for clarity; he might make a fool of himself groping around hIS characters' psychosexual Lnsides like a mes- sianic explorer, but he was opening up new terrain. Russell, on the other hand, heads right for the purple and his overheated vir- tuoso tableaux are piled on for our admira- tion, not for our understanding. The movie is a highly colored wirl of emotional impre - sions, bursting with intensity that isn't really grounded in anything. Probably to see this particular movie before reading the book is desecration; the novel is a staggering accom- plishment-the sort of book that leaves one dumbfounded at ho\\ far its author got-and since there are few English novels of this stature, it's mad to jeopardize one's vision of it by reading it in terms of the actors and images of the movie (The movie is rather like Lawrence's accounts of bad ex) With the bold, tense Glenda Jackson as Gudrun; Jennie Linden as her unimagInative sister Ursula; t\lan Bates as Birkin; Oliver Reed, glum and biliou , as Gerald; and also Vladek Sheybal, Eleanor Bron, Alan Webb, Catherine Will- mer, Richard Heffer, Christopher Gable, and Michael Gough The adaptation is by Larry Kramer, who also produced; the cinematog- raphy is by Billy Williams; the score is by Georges Delerue; the set designer is Luciana Arrighi, the costume designer is Shirley Rus- sell (Cinema Village; Oct. 23-25 ) THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLy-Peter Weir's romantic adventure film IS set in Indonesia in 1965, during the political upheavals that shook President Sukarno's unstable govern- ment, and centers on the Caucasian commu- nity of journalists and diplomats in Jakarta Linda Hunt has the pivotal male role of the goblinlike Billy Kwan, a half-Chinese, half- Australian cameraman who plays match- maker and bring together Mel Gibson, as a newly arrived Australian foreign correspon- den t, and Sigourney Weaver, as the assistant military attaché at the British Embassy. To a degree, Weir is the victim of hie;; own skill at creating the illusion of authentic Third World misery, rioting, and chaos; the emaciation of the natives overwhelms the made-up prob- lems of the Caucasians. But movie squalor has its own glamour, and scene by scene this film is fascinating, despite a certain amount of mystical-Ea t blather, it's alive on the screen A new-style old-time "dangerous" steaminess builds up as Gibson and Weaver eye each other. And though Billy K wan is the movie's walking conscience and higher moral [JurIJo e, Linda Hunt's lyric intensity and concentration help to purify the lines she speaks Filmed in the Philippines and Aus- tralia. With Bill Kerr, Michael Murphy, Bembol Roco, and Noel Ferrier Based on C. J. Koch's highly readable 1978 novel. (2/21/83) (Embassy 72nd St.; Oct. 29.) ZELIG-Woody Allen's intricately layered par- ody: a mock documentary about a celebrity of the twentIes, the Human Chameleon, who takes on the characteristics of whatever strong personalities he comes in con tact with. The film seems small, and there's a reason: there aren't any characters in it, not even Zelig. Allen shafts the almost universally ac- cepted idea that everyone is someone. This is a fantasy about being famous for being nobody. The whole movie is an ingenious stunt: it has been thought out in terms of the film image, turning the American history we know from newsreels into slapstick by insert- ing the little loe;;t sheep Zelig in a corner of the frdme Zelig's story couldn't have been told any other way-the pathos would have been crushing. The documentary faker) dries it out and keeps it light. Zelig is always Just glimpsed and the movie darts on. It's made up of artful little touches. With Mia Farrow as Zelig's analyst. (8/8/83) (Quad Cinema, New Yorker, and Criterion Theatres... tj] Beekman; through Oct. 20.... (j] Manhat- tan; starting Oct. 21 ) hI-